


And Here’s The Tragedy

by Sister_Grimm



Series: Watch the sun swallow him whole [1]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Absolutely everyone is fucked up here, Alternate Universe - Organized Crime, Children getting tattoos, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Non graphic violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:29:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22590496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sister_Grimm/pseuds/Sister_Grimm
Summary: Teuvo Teravainen wears on his skin the things he doesn’t understand about himself
Relationships: Teuvo Teravainen/Kimmo Timonen
Series: Watch the sun swallow him whole [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1932754
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	And Here’s The Tragedy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThoseDaysThatWill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThoseDaysThatWill/gifts).

> This is mob fic, y’all, mind those tags.
> 
> Just for fun, no offence, turn around if you’re involved
> 
> Thank you Lily for letting me play in your world for a while
> 
> And the aesthetic for this fic:
> 
> https://isconnormcdavidok.tumblr.com/post/190685499989/i-had-a-lot-of-feels-about-thosedaysthatwill-s

I. This is for the shit we’ve taken

Teuvo’s been waiting for this, the weight of the gun in the pocket of his hoodie steadying as he walks towards Esa’s parents apartment. He’d tried to tell Esa not to be home for this but he’s not sure Esa’s parents would have let them out of their sight. He hates them so much. He has gloves on his hands and his hood over his head. With the hood pulled up all he can smell is the shit his parents smoke. The chemical scent that sinks into his clothes and marks everything that’s his as _theirs_ and Esa’s clothes don’t smell like Esa anymore. He’s not going back home after this though. So he knocks on the door.

No one in their sketchy fucking tenement building will complain about a shady looking fucker knocking on the door. Esa’s dad opens the door and Teuvo looks up at him and steels himself for a moment and then he shoots. Pulls the trigger twice and pushes his way into the apartment looking for Esa’s mom. She’s the one who always tells Esa they do this for his own good. She’s cowering in the kitchen when he finds her. He shoots her twice too and opens Esa’s bedroom door. “Take what you need, we just need to make one stop.” He pours alcohol on the floor of the kitchen and starts a small fire. They have time to start the other one, he’s sure.

Esa nods, a bag already packed in his hands and they go down a few flights of stairs. The elevators are broken again. Teuvo’s parents live in the smallest unit in the building. He unlocks the door and lets himself in. Pauses and listens, he can hear noises from the sofa bed that acts as the only bed in the apartment and his father is standing by the wall, watching. Teuvo shoots.He hears his mother scream and he comes around the corner to shoot her and maybe he didn’t have to shoot the client. But.

Why he does it isn’t important.

He grabs the bottle of gasoline and pours it over the bodies and out the door.

The building burns for hours and Teuvo takes Esa to where he’s been squatting. Ramus has spread his shit over the biggest mattress and Teuvo glares, “Move your shit”.

There’s a second where Rasmus looks like he’s going to arguing with him and Arturri shakes his head, “You can share with me.” Teuvo gives him a pointed look, what the fuck is he waiting for and Esa looks at him, that look he gets sometimes that Teuvo thinks means he did something right.

“You killed them.”, Esa says quietly.

“They _hurt _you.”, Teuvo says quietly and he’s disassembling a pen the way Rasmus showed him and he spreads it out on his lap, tugs off one sock and stretches his foot. The adrenaline of the day has faded finally and he feels very hollow, he thinks. Except when Esa smiles at him because Esa is safe now, they can’t hurt him anymore. And he never has to go home, they have no home to go back to anyway. And he asks Esa for his lighter.

He heats the sewing needle until it’s red hot and dips it into the ink, the dots form slowly as he pricks his skin over and over again until he has five little black dot below his big toe and it bleeds down his foot. He hears Esa breathing nearby and he wipes at his foot with a piece of tissue soaked in whiskey and it burns just for moment and Teuvo inhaled sharply through his teeth and Esa smiles at him just a bit. “I like them.”

Teuvo nods and Ramus hands him a small square of bandage, “Don’t get fucking gangrene.” Teuvo just takes the bandage, nods again, a quick thank you and tapes it to his foot before he eases his sock back on and he can feel Esa watching him.

“You can sleep here.”, he says quietly and he stops. Clears his throats. “This is yours now.”

“What about you?”, Esa asks looking around the squat with it’s collection of mattresses and dirty kids and Teuvo shrugs. Back in the apartment building when they had to hide overnight Esa would curl around him, barely touching him but shielding him, Teuvo’s face in his chest. “Here.”, Esa mumbles, shoving something at him.

It’s a hoodie, a Jokerit hoodie, Esa’s favourite and inhaling is almost subconscious, “You fixed it”.

Esa just gives him that same little smile, “Yeah.” And Teuvo gets the sense that the others are watching him. And he turns and glares, catches Arturri looking away and Rasmus moving his shit over. He pokes at his foot idly. The tiny square of bandage is at least stopping the blood from leaking on to his sock. “Stop that.”, Esa chastises and he dips his head, he knows Esa doesn’t like when he aggravates his injuries.

He wonders if they can see the fire from the squat and he cranes his neck to look out the window but he doesn’t hear sirens. He’s not surprised, no one cares about the projects and he holds Esa’s hoodie tight for a long moment and he finds he doesn’t want to put it away.

Rasmus has lit a cigarette and every time Teuvo moves his foot he feels the low throb of the tattoos and he smiles, letting the little pulse of warm slide up his spine and he shivers a bit, not because he’s cold, he’s actually too warm in the hoodie that doesn’t smell quite right, the hoodie he tugs off to replace with the one Esa fixed and it falls nearly to his knees, sleeves pulled down so they cover his hands. The gun he empties of whatever bullets are left and then hides under a loose floor board.

II. It’s the kind of pain that you’ve been missing

It’s raining, drizzling really, sinking into the hoodie Teuvo’s wearing and he has to shove the cuff back over his hand in order to take the cigarette from Esa who blows smoke well over Teuvo’s head and he doesn’t say anything, just takes a drag and tries not to shiver. They’re flush with cash after dropping their latest run with the collection courier in return for their cut. The cash in their pockets is earned but the cigarettes are stolen, Teuvo palmed them into the pocket of his jeans while Esa was buying them coffee, anything to keep the hunger pangs away and they’ve long since finished the coffee.

The Helsinki spring is damp at night and they need to keep moving until the sun comes up and it’s warm enough to go back to their squat and try to sleep.

It’s past last call but Teuvo’s done some pick ups at after hours places that they could go but they turn the corner and Teuvo stops, the bright neon lights of the tattoo parlour catching his eye. He jerks his head towards the shop and Esa makes a face for moment and then nods, “Ok.” Teuvo takes one last deep drag off the smoke and drops it, stubs it out with the heel of his boot. The shop is small, a single room, two stations and one artist and the artist looks both of them up and down and Teuvo glares at him stepping in front of Esa. And Esa is quiet for a moment.

“You want tattoos? I take cash. Only cash.”

And he’s still _looking_ at them and Teuvo’s trying not to snarl at him, tell him to stop it but he likes the sound of _cash only_.

“Yeah.”, Esa says and Teuvo just nods.

The artist hands them a leather book full of pictures and Teuvo takes in the stark color on skin and feels overwhelmed. “You pick.”, he whispers, voice harsh and rough from lack of use. Esa nods, taking the book from Teuvo’s cold hands and he pulls the cuffs back down, listening to the laminated pages turn.

He can’t really look over Esa’s shoulder so he sort of peers over his arm, hyper conscious of the eyes linger on him and he shifts the too big hoodie to flash the gun at his waistband. The artist stops looking at him after that. “This one.”, Esa says finally, laying the book on the counter. The book is open to a picture of a bird, red, blue and black. All thick black lines and hard contrast.

And the artist nods, “Where do you want it?”

Esa shakes his head, “It’s for him.”

Teuvo stiffens, the artist is _looking_ at him again, his eyes lingering where the gun sits in his waist. Esa’s hand rests lightly on his shoulder, a steadying pressure as Teuvo glares up at the artist and finally the other man nods. “You’re getting it too, right?”, he asks and it’s too loud in the quiet shop, the under current of anxiety, that he doesn’t want Esa to be alone either. 

Esa kind of smiles, the smile that means Teuvo did something right, “Yeah, of course I will.”

The artist calls them back, Teuvo tugging his hoodie off and his t-shirt is too big too, drowning his skinny frame as he sits back in the chair. The artist’s eyes flicker down his arm but whatever he’s looking for he doesn’t find, cleaning his arm and laying the stencil.

Teuvo’s not sure what he’s expecting when he starts the first line, the dull buzz and his brain starts to feel sluggish, with his free hand he reaches for Esa’s hand. And Esa doesn’t move, just lets Teuvo hold his hand. It’s rarely that Teuvo seeks this out, preferring to be totally covered even curled up sleeping in the corner of the squat with Esa shielding him from view. But Esa doesn’t move from his spot by the chair, just lets Teuvo’s hand rest there, palm to palm, they’re not even really holding hands, just ... touching, Teuvo curling and uncurling his fingers as the needle buzzes over his skin.

The artist tries to talk to them for all of about two minutes before Teuvo silences him with another pointed look. The line work is simple, thick easy curves piecing together the bird on his arm. The shading is rougher, skipping over his skin and spreading colour in little chunks and he’s struggling to keep his eyes open. It’s sinking slowly that he’s been awake for days. He’s peripherally aware of Esa’s hand and he decides to close his eyes.

Watching Esa get tattooed is very different then being tattooed himself. Esa squirms more than he does and doesn’t look like he’s desperately needing sleep though Teuvo’s sure he is, it’s been cold lately and they’ve been walking the streets instead of sleeping because Esa can only keep them so warm in their squat with it’s broken windows and bugs on the floor. There are a few moments where Teuvo thinks Esa will try to hold his hand properly but he seems to think better of it at first but eventually Teuvo makes the first move, giving Esa’s hand a quick squeeze and then letting go just as fast. Esa’s eyes flicker up to him from where he lays in the chair and Teuvo doesn’t smile or anything, he rarely does but he nods to Esa.

I’m here, it says, you’re not alone.

The artist doesn’t ask for a photo but Teuvo holds up his arm where it’s wrapped in bandages and watches as Esa’s arm is wrapped and then Esa reaches for the cash in his pocket.

“I’m paying for his.”, Esa says quickly and Teuvo looks up quickly and he wants to argue and Esa shakes his head. “It’s a birthday present.”

And Teuvo reaches into his own pocket quickly because Teuvo can’t let Esa pay for both of them. Even the part of his brain that knows it’s Esa and Esa won’t need to be paid back and he shoves the bills at the artist, “For his.”

III. Toxic life from toxic waste

Prison is...

Well it’s fine really, he gets three meals and a warm bed every day.

He also gets the shit beat out of him almost every day for the first few months and that’s also fine. He’s taken worse from meaner.

But the thing is, he’s small, his parents never fed him right, his mother was on drugs while she was pregnant probably and he spent several years living off of coffee and cigarettes. So he’s a small, skinny fuck is the thing.

He’s not expecting it.

Not expecting the way the older inmate shoulders him into the wall, hard and it knocks the wind out of him and he inhales sharply, the other man’s hand coming down over his mouth, “This will be easier if you don’t scream, kid.”

Teuvo screws his eyes closed, fights off a rush of memory that has his breath coming in short, scared, spurts, temperature running too hot and too cold and he _bites_, lets Rasmus’s lessons come back and he spits in the man’s face, “Don’t fucking touch me.” And then he starts to punch, he’s pretty sure they’re not technically “good” punches the way he was taught but he doesn’t care. He just doesn’t want him to touch him.

He doesn’t stop until a couple of other inmates who’d been looking the other way haul him off, fists covered in blood and he spits again, legs kicking as they pull him away.

Teuvo gets a month in solitary for it, because the man survives. Barely. But he survives. Teuvo doesn’t mind solitary. He doesn’t need people, doesn’t do much talking, what he does is punch things, do push ups, he’s not allowed books in solitary but he remembers the pictures from the exercise books his cell mate has. He punches the air and does push ups and jumping jacks and tries to burn off all this energy he doesn’t understand and can’t manage and he chases the way his muscles hurt and he doesn’t need the Bible, all he needs is to get strong.

He bruises his knuckles on cinder block walls and counts push ups into the triple digits when he can’t sleep. He wakes up biting his lip to keep from screaming and gets up and works until he can’t tell what’s raising his heart rate from fear and what’s from the exercise and as long as they look the same it doesn’t matter which it is. It’s all the same in the end, the burn and the shake in his arms

He’s allowed back to his cell after his month is up and his cell mate looks at him, “He’s dead, you know.”

And Teuvo looks up, he doesn’t need to ask who and his cell mate continues, “Hung himself.”

There is something in the other man’s voice that Teuvo can’t place and he just nods, nothing to say. He’s dead. And Teuvo has an idea. His nightmares came back in solitary and he has no Esa to chase them away, no familiar warmth to hide in when he’s scared. And he can’t show them he’s scared, not the guards, not the inmates.

They have an artist in a few cells down with a little jailhouse tattoo gun made of pen and wire. Teuvo trades two bags of meth and a package of cigarettes for it. Sits on the too thin blanket on the too thin mattress on the hard metal bed. The artist offers him a shot of fucking bathtub whisky and Teuvo doesn’t drink but he takes it. He wants the burn, needs it and he scratches his nails over the swallow on his arm. And he bares his neck, waits, the artist kneeling beside him, operating a make shift pedal with one foot on the floor and the other knee on the bed. His prison shirt is pulled down enough to expose his collarbone and he’s hyper conscious of the other people in the cell shielding them from view.

This tattoo hurts more than the others. It’s on his neck, from below his jaw to just above his collarbone. The skin is thin and the nerves close and Teuvo is so so aware of the hand on his chest. It’s over his jumpsuit but every time he breathes, he feels the pressure of the hand, the steady beat of his heart. He thinks maybe he could be a person. It scrapes scrapes scrapes over his skin, a little trickle of blood down his neck, cold as his skin runs hot.

There is nothing he can wear that will cover this and that’s exactly what he wants, no one is going to touch him with this on him now. He belongs here now. He lets his hair fall in his face, he hasn’t gotten it cut in a while. He should he thinks, his mind wandering anywhere but in his body, the warmth of adrenaline overwhelming all over him. His hair falls in front of his eyes and he thinks about how the lifers shave their heads and he thinks about that. Thinks about the way Esa lightly pets over his hair sometimes when he thinks Teuvo is asleep.

He doesn’t shave his head.

The guards raise an eyebrow when they see him. There is no bandage over it, it’s sterilized by bathtub gin and he raises his chin in defiance. He doesn’t like the look on the guard’s face and he balls up his fists, bouncing lightly on his toes, he’ll fight if he has too and the guard looks at him, “Stay in fucking line, inmate”.

He feels like a wire ready to snap and the throb in his neck is acute in that moment. No one can touch him anymore.

IV. With our hearts so heavy

“Where’s Sebastian?”, Esa observes quietly as the meeting ends.

Teuvo looks over at him, dragging his eyes away from the door Kimmo’s just left without saying anything to him. Again. He’s lost track of how long it’s been since Kimmo even looked at him.“Working. Somewhere.” And he’s not sure why Esa cares. He’s never asked for time with Sebastian, never cared much for him as far as Teuvo can tell.

Esa just nods, eyes flickering over to the bedroom. “C’mon.”

Teuvo raises an eyebrow and Esa just repeats himself, “C’mon, we need to get out of here.” And well Teuvo doesn’t want to be there anyway. Doesn’t want to languish in this antsy painful feeling in his stomach. He can still hear it. The soft moans and the praise Kimmo had spoken, spoken loud enough that Teuvo could hear it, nothing like the whispered murmurs in his ear Kimmo lavished over time and too much like it and his breath is coming to fast suddenly and Esa rests his hand on the swallow on his arm.

Teuvo nods, following Esa down to the car. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t know what to say anyway, he knows Esa well enough to know where they’re going and when he pulls up, Teuvo’s right. It’s a newer shop, he’s never been before and he follows Esa in and the artist looks at them and stands up straight immediately. “What can I do for you, sirs?”

“I want a tattoo.”, Teuvo says and the artist nods and leads him over to a place to sit and ordinarily Teuvo would look to Esa for what he’s going to get but he doesn’t need to this time. The idea is there in the back of his head and he’s not even sure how because he hadn’t thought about this at all. “It’ll be on my back. A dragon, the wings going from my shoulder to hip”, and he gestures to his shoulder to demonstrate. “One claw has a bloody heart in it” and he trails off after that.

The artist looks at him and waits and waits, “Anything in the other claw?”

Esa is beside him and Teuvo speaks without thinking, the second time in too soon, “Candy.” And he hears Esa inhale sharply beside him and Teuvo turns towards him and he just nods. He has nothing to say.

“Colour?”, the artist asks and Teuvo just shakes his head. He wants it black and grey, stark and fine and brutal splashed across his back. “You’re looking at about 24 hours of work.”

Teuvo’s never sat for longer than a single two hour piece but the idea written on the paper is pulling him down the ground that seemed so far away only a day earlier and he breathes. Pays his deposit and books his appointment.

The line work takes 8 hours, he lays on his stomach and lets the scratch of the needle burn through his skin. He stopped smoking in prison but when he gets his break to stretch his legs he finds himself craving something, cigarettes he thinks. He wants it to be be cigarettes. He doesn’t want it to be something else. He can tolerate a cigarette addiction but it won’t fill the void that he’s trying to color over in every shade of black and grey his tattoo artist can create.

Esa talks, sort of, about television and vaguely about stupid shit Julius has does recently and Juuse and his goddamn baby and the mention of Pekka is too close to Kimmo and he inhales sharply and a little shakily and the artist looks at him, “You want to stop?”

Teuvo shakes his head, “No, I’m good.”

This is what he needs, the warmth melting down his skin, down his spine, to where his hand rests palm to palm with Esa. The void is still there, Kimmo shaped and painful, swallowing up all that’s left of him but the buzz of the needle is drowning it out the words, drowning out the way Kimmo had called that fucking _whore_ beautiful, the way he’d talked about how it felt to fuck him, it drowns out the way the words layer over his last memory of being with Kimmo.

It burns behind his eyes, a coppery heavy taste in his mouth that he hates and Esa’s hand restsunder his palm and his foot twitches almost imperceptibly as the needle scratches a line at his hip. He curls and uncurls his fingers instead of talking and it’s probably the longest he’s ever been still. He’s only ever been this relaxed before in Kimmo’s arms. Maybe Esa’s, a long time ago but that was a long long time ago and it’s not important. Not when the artist asks him if he can stand and yeah he can, the lines stark against his pale skin in the mirror.

There’s no shading yet, but there are lines, a dragon swooping down his back, the fire on his hip, the claws and the stars that would be in the night sky behind it, the crescent moon and he smiles, a little awkward and unwieldy and right as he looks at Esa, who nods as the artist wraps him up, tapes the bandage to shoulder and hip and Esa hands him his shirt and he hears Esa kind of laugh when he looks at the t-shirt. It’s one of Esa’s, white and a little loose on Teuvo even still, the pounds of muscle he’s put on since he was 12 not doing enough to make up for the four inches and twenty pounds Esa has on him more or less. It almost fits at the shoulders where he’s put on muscles from boxing, too long where he’s shorter than Esa and lose at the sleeved where his arms just aren’t as bulky as Esa’s and it’s a soothing soft pressure on his back, soft and so thin because it’s so old. He thinks he’s had it for years. It doesn’t smell like Esa anymore.

V. Don’t Speak, Don’t Make a Sound

Kimmo takes him back.

Kimmo _forgives_ him.

He makes sure the artist sees his gun when he sits down because Teuvo knows what he’s asking for. He’s asking for five blocky letters on the inside of his thigh, marking him like he’s a common whore, property of the most powerful man in Helsinki and and he dares the artist to say something disrespectful. Teuvo would kill him and finish the job himself, his foot itches at that thought.

He lets the blocky lines centre him, hands curling. There is no Esa here to hold, it’s just him and the artist and the buzz of the needle. It feels very strange to not have Esa to turn to, he thinks he can count on one hand how many tattoos Esa hasn’t been present for. But this one ... he doesn’t think Esa will understand. Teuvo’s not sure he understands but he can’t stop looking at the lines forming on his skin, his leg bent and folded for easy access. It takes 15 minutes to make him Kimmo’s for life.

He’s seen tattoos like this on lots of people, even given them to one but he never thought he’d get one himself. He doesn’t ask himself a lot of questions about why he does think, acts on instinct and feedback from Esa or Kimmo. He does as he told and he works and he _belongs_ to Kimmo.

The bandage is soft on his skin and the sensation is familiar and he goes back home. Not his apartment above Esa’s in the building Kimmo owns but his new home now, the one he shares with Kimmo, with the gym and his own keys, not being woken by Kimmo coming to him because he’s horny or needs release.

He soaps the tattoo down, no cream when he gets out of the shower and Teuvo doesn’t get dressed, doesn’t even bother putting on a towel, just walks from the master bath into Kimmo’s bedroom and Kimmo is reading a book when he pauses, looks up over the book and smirks at him, “Teukka.”

The tattoo on his thigh the small but not so small to be missed by the way Kimmo’s keen eye sweeps over his body. “I got something.”, Teuvo says quietly. He’s aiming for flirtatious but he’s not sure if he quite gets there based on the way that Kimmo raises an eyebrow but he puts the book aside and _looks_ at him. He knows when Kimmo sees it because he swears, loudly.

And then Kimmo is up, pressing him back against the door, murmuring familiar praise as he pins him, drags his teeth over the tattoo at Teuvo’s neck, the prison faded colours touched up in black and yellow and red. And Teuvo tilts his head away so he’s not looking at Kimmo directly and Kimmo’s breath is hot by his ear, “I want to see you.”

And Teuvo knows what that means, Kimmo fitting the silky blindfold over his eyes, laying him out on his back and the long moment of nothing before Kimmo touches him. A soft press of his fingers over the tender skin of his thigh where he’s marked as Kimmo’s.

Kimmo’s hands tease over his body but they keep coming back to the tattoo at his thigh and the one at his neck and Teuvo feels completely surrounded, bracketed to the bed by the man he belongs to. “I love you, Teukka.”, Kimmo murmurs against his skin.

Teuvo’s fists are tight in the sheets and he’s repeating Kimmo’s words back, of course. He _belongs_ to him, that’s so much more than just love and it’s written on his skin as Kimmo pushes into him. Teuvo’s whole body subsumed in the sensation and he means, “Kime...”

He’d never even called him Kimmo in bed before Kimmo took him back but the nickname falls past his lips as easy and natural as anything, his voice breaking with pleasure on the end of the word and Kimmo’s hands are tights on his side like he’s fighting for control, “Again.”

It’s not a suggestion. It’s an order.

And it’s not a hard one to follow, he likes the way the nickname sounds on his lips. He’s not religious. The only god he’s ever seen worshipped is money but he thinks this is what praying tells like, the way Kimmo’s name feels on his lips good and right and as Kimmo presses his fingers against the tattoo and sparks fly up his spine. And he screams. Each sensation new and overwhelming every single time like the first time for him.

Kimmo holds him after too, Teuvo’s head curled against his chest and he listens to Kimmo breathe the way he used to listen to Esa breathe at night when he couldn’t sleep in the squat. Kimmo’s arms are warm around him and their size difference isn’t substantial the way it was with EsaKimmo outmasses him but isn’t any taller but it doesn’t matter, Kimmo still surrounds him totally.

He’s not sure when he started needing this to sleep, needing the way Kimmo feels around him and it’s almost subconscious the way he scratches at his arm, Esa’s swallow on his forearm and the tender throb of his thigh. Kimmo pets over his hair, down over his lion and finding every single tattoo on his chest and down, “You belong to me.”, Kimmo reminds him, the pad of a finger finding raised letters for a moment.

Kimmo doesn’t even need to say it anymore, he’s his completely. Body, heart, and mind.That’s never been in question and Kimmo can’t throw him away again. To belong to someone like Teuvo belongs to him means you can’t be abandoned. He supposed Kimmo could sell him, trade him for power, but the mark on his thigh means that he will always belong to Kimmo at least a little bit.


End file.
